Thou shalt be humble and patient
in all things, and thankful this stuff works at all;
for lo, there are many paths to
wisdom, and if one module faileth to work as advertised, thou shalt figure out
a workaround.

Thou shalt manage thine geodatabases, and follow the paths to thy
data files and be a good shepherd unto them,
and not forsake critical files in Default.gdb or the temp directory.

Thou shalt specify the cellsize of thine rasters, and attend to
their other Environment settings, and not blindly accept the
default settings lest thy project founder in confusion.

Thou shalt pay attention to
database field types, neither confusing short integer with float
nor long integer with
double.

Thou shalt not depend on a corrupted
Map Document file after thy project has crashed, lest it crash upon thee
yet again;
yea verily, thou shalt open a blank new map and add thine data to it,
knowing where to find them.

Thou shalt create maps both simple
and fancy, but they shall represent thy research steps forthrightly.
Thou
shalt not lie with maps, neither shalt thou idolize eye-candy, even when creating
TIN or 3D images to please the Philistines in charge of thy research
funding.

Thou shalt not abuse the lab
equipment, even if wroth unto blasphemy.

Thou shalt accept success with
grace, and disappointment also, and if thy best efforts reward thee not, thou
shalt retire for beer, and return to the lab another day. Thou
shalt not weep over GIS.